Testing Your HomeKit App

If you don’t have physical accessories, use HomeKit Accessory Simulator to simulate accessories in a home. Each simulated accessory has services with characteristics that you can control from your app. Your app creates the objects and relationships that are stored in the HomeKit database. It creates the home layout, adds new accessories to the home in the simulated environment, and adds the accessories to rooms in a home. Then your app can control the accessories displayed in HomeKit Accessory Simulator. To test with HomeKit Accessory Simulator, run your app in iOS Simulator, or run it on an iOS device using Xcode.

HomeKit Accessory Simulator is an additional developer tool that is not installed with Xcode. To install HomeKit Accessory Simulator, follow the steps in Download HomeKit Accessory Simulator.

Adding Accessories

Use HomeKit Accessory Simulator to add some accessories to the simulated network.

To add an accessory to the network

1.In HomeKit Accessory Simulator, click the Add button (+) at the bottom of the left column.

2.Choose Add Accessory from the pop-up menu.

3.Enter an accessory name and manufacturer.

4.Click Finish.
To delete an accessory, select the accessory and enter Delete on the keyboard.